JESUS, THE GREAT ACCOMPLISHER -- Tomorrow:
"And, having made peace through the blood of His cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled, in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in His sight." (Colossians 1:20-22)
Devotion 7 of 32
" . . . through the blood of His cross . . . "
Nearly all versions read the same: "the blood of His cross." The NIV and NIB read, "through His blood, shed on the cross."
The required peace was not made by Jesus being born, but by Him dying. It was not the result of His life on earth, but His death upon the cross. It was not the blood that oozed from His pore in Gethsemane – but the "blood of His cross." It was not the blood that was shed in Pilate's court, but "the blood of His cross."
I do want to press this point because of the obscurity that has been created by shallow theology. The place where Jesus bore our sins was not in Gethsemane. It was not in Pilate's fall. It was not before Herod. It was not as He carried the cross to Golgotha. Those are not the places where the sins of the world were placed upon Him (Isa 53:6). They are not where He "bore our sins in His body" (1 Pet 2:24). They are not where Jesus was "made sin" for us (2 Cor 5:21).
THE BLOOD
Under the Law the Lord established the significance of blood. "For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (Lev 17:11). Because of the sanctity of the blood, and in anticipation of the sacrifice of Christ, the Law forbade men to eat blood. "For it is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is for the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off" (Lev 17:14).
In this text "the blood" encapsulates the voluntary and very literal death of the Lord Jesus. This was the laying down of His life, which the Father commanded Him to do (John 10:17-18). It was a substitutionary death, with its merits being realized by those whose own death counted for nothing. This death resulted in the ultimate atonement for the soul, being prefigured in the sacrifices offered under the Law (Lev 17:11). It was required because sin took life from man both in the natural and in the spiritual. In order for life to be restored to man, it must be taken from another, whose life was thoroughly acceptable to God – without sin or any form of defilement.
PRAYER POINT: Father, in the name of Jesus, I thank You for the sanctifying power of the blood of His cross.